A few questions

My surgery went really well. I recovered very quickly, but that means I'm back to work (my gums hurt really bad and I have a bump on the inside of my mouth where my upper and lower jaw connect, though). I've been thinking about a few things for my series, though.

1. Do you have any advice about the planning process? How should I come up with clues and work them into the story?

2. Would it be too distracting to give some of my characters parody/pun names? What if I used words from other languages besides English?

3. Do you guys have any suggestions for good books to read about writing mysteries? All I could find at my local library was page after page explaining why the vast majority of cases in mystery works are murders and provided nothing about useful things like how to plan out series or crime-solving process.

4. Should New Eden (the fictional country where my series takes place) use customary or metric measurements? It would make sense for them to use the metric system, but I don't know if I could keep track/would be too difficult for me to create since math is extremely difficult for me (I did find a customary/metric converter online, though) and/or if it would be too confusing for my readers. What do you think?

Replies to This Discussion

I came up with something else I need advice on. I was at a park in my area today (I do my best thinking when I’m outside and/or being active) and I came up with some ideas. I’m having trouble figuring out what scenes should be from what character’s point of view. Some are pretty obvious (for example, the courtroom scenes need to be from Dalton’s point of view and the action scenes involving the transformations should be from Brianna’s), but others are harder to know. I was thinking about a sequential order that repeats itself every four volumes. All the volumes would have scenes from the point of view of each of the 3 main characters, but there would be a cycle of which character gets the main focus, with a “special edition” with a more difficult for me to produce (I can’t think of a good word) plot where the point of view is more evenly split between the three main characters. For example, volume 1 would be from Brianna’s point of view, volume 2 from Dalton’s, volume 3 from Hazel’s, and volume 4 a special. What do you think?

Writing mysteries is very tricky. You have to absolutely know all of the details and clues and then strategically lay them out in your story so your characters and your readers can start to pick up on them, but not give away the whole secret. You should write each clue on a separate sticky note and attach them to the wall in the order you will reveal them.

2. Parody/pun names

Any name is fine if it helps move your story along. Search the internet for "random name generator" to get tons of ideas.

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